It has come to light that Terrorist entities that overrun northern Nigeria are arming themselves with weapons that developed in Libya. Guns traffickers in Nigeria are profiting from instability across the Sahel, especially in Niger, which has become a critical transit point for weapons taken from Libyan supplies. Those weapons have shifted into other Sahel nations as well as Nigeria.
Nigeria’s National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons eliminated 2,400 weapons seized from criminals across the country. The volume of illegal weapons in Nigeria has been characterised as “like rice on the market,” with much of that traffic being traced back to Libya. This total and unchecked proliferation of illicit arms has reached an epidemic level in Nigeria in recent times with attendant national security implications.
The 2011 destruction of the Libyan government under ex-dictator Moammar Gadhafi left the country’s huge weapons arsenals largely unguarded. The United Nations calculated in 2020 that Libya had as much as 200,000 tons of guns at the time of its collapse. The subsequent civil wars made the safety of Libya’s weapons stockpiles even more alarming. Those weapons were posing virtually unguarded, predestined for markets in the Sahel down south.
Beyond its reserves, Libya has also become an origin of foreign weapons many of them produced in Russia and brought to the land by mercenaries connected to the ex-Wagner Group, now known as Africa Corps. Russia also operates Libyan ports to supply weapons to military juntas leading Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Many of those weapons eventually end up in the hands of terrorists in northern Nigeria, endangering civilians and Soldiers alike.
It is assessed that Nigeria had 6.2 million small arms in the hands of civilians compared to almost 580,000 in the hands of security forces. The existence of illegal weapons creates a vicious cycle of fluctuation as local communities arm themselves to protect against terrorists and criminals. Overflowing illicit arms flows have expanded the availability of firearms in many communities.
